Did
you know that there's been a hunger strike going on among prisoners
held at Guantanamo for six weeks now? And that the number of those
participating has risen to include 24 of the 166 prisoners there, most
of whom have been held for eleven years now without even being charged?
And that half of them have been cleared to be released or transferred,
but they're still being held?

Periodic hunger strikes have occurred at
Guantanamo since shortly after the prison opened in January 2002 to
house suspects captured in overseas counterterrorism operations after
the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The
prison has 166 inmates. Nearly all have been held for 11 years without
charge, and about half have been cleared for transfer or release. Many
are Yemenis who the United States will not repatriate at this time
because of instability in that country.

More
than 50 lawyers representing the prisoners sent a letter to Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel last week urging him to help end the hunger
strike, which they said began on February 6 to protest the confiscation
of letters, photographs and legal mail, and the rough handling of Korans
during searches of their cells.

They
said the participants' health had deteriorated alarmingly, and that
some had lost more than 20 or 30 pounds (9 to 14 kilograms). Kelly said
the prisoners who spoke to Guantanamo staff cited other reasons for the
strike.

"They had great optimism
that Guantanamo would be closed. They were devastated apparently ...
when the president backed off, at least (that's) their perception, of
closing the facility," Kelly told the House of Representatives Armed
Services Committee in Washington.

Captain
Robert Durand, a spokesman at the detention camp, said 24 Guantanamo
captives were on a hunger strike and eight had lost enough weight that
doctors were force-feeding them liquid nutrients thorough tubes inserted
in their noses and into their stomachs. Two were hospitalized with
dehydration, he said.

David Remes, a Washington-based lawyer who represents 15 detainees at Guantanamo, said his February visit shocked him.

"I think every one of the clients I saw had lost 30 pounds or more when I was there," Remes said. "They were weak and chilled."

Remes said two of his clients were unable to meet because they were
too weak from their hunger strike. He said he knows that at least six of
his clients are participating.

Can
you imagine the outcry that would be taking place in the mainstream
media if this were happening in a Republican administration? And it
would be justified, make no mistake. Holding prisoners for eleven years
without even charging them with crimes, when half of them could be
released or transferred today, is simply monstrous inhumanity. Calling
the prisoners "detainees" and "suspected terrorists" shouldn't reduce
their humanity in our eyes; if you've been held as a "suspect" in jail
for eleven years you are no longer a suspect; you are a political
prisoner. Where is the evidence that any of these people were ever
involved in actual terrorist acts? At the very least, the ones who have
been cleared to be released but are still being held are having their
human rights violated in the most egregious way.

Go to the Ironic Catholic's blog post to
find links that will help you contact the president and your elected
officials about this. And I encourage you to pray for the situation to
improve and for the prisoners to be treated with their full human
dignity, which would include at the very minimum releasing and
transferring those who have already been cleared for this to happen.

1 comment:

What is the Coalition for Clarity?

"...I reiterate that the prohibition against torture “cannot be contravened under any circumstances...”" Pope Benedict XVI

In the political climate in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholics are grappling with confusing messages as to the morality of torture. Lost in political and often partisan debates is the clear voice of the Church, who has called torture evil, and who teaches with conviction the truth that a captured enemy combatant, political prisoner, or other opponent does not lose his human dignity or his right to humane treatment.

The contributors and members of the Coalition for Clarity believe with the Church that torture is intrinsically evil, a violation of our Christian duty to treat all men as our neighbors and of their right to be treated humanely and with dignity regardless of their status. We hope by discussing this issue and providing links to resources supporting Church teaching that this blog will help to bring clarity to the issue of torture and to our duty as members of God's family to oppose its use in all circumstances.

Because we seek the clarity of Church teaching on all issues, we also hope to discuss and reflect on any issue pertaining to human life and dignity, but especially those issues where the possibility that the Church's teaching is not being presented clearly exists.

It is one thing to repeatedly ask what torture is in order to get at the truth. It is quite another to repeatedly ask what it is in order to obfuscate the truth.

Sean P. Dailey

The Catechism on Torture

"2297Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law."

Veritatis Splendor on Torture

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature "incapable of being ordered" to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that "there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object". The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: "Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator".

USCCB Study Guide on Torture

From the UN Convention Against Torture:

"For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."